Texts, Drinking and Decisions: Can a Texting Campaign Positively Influence Youth Drinking Decisions?

Background:  In Medford Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston, approximately 42% of students in grades 9-12 report having consumed alcohol during the past 30 days. Underage alcohol use is correlated with increased risk behaviors. Public health officials and teens in the community recognize the problem and established a youth coalition to address it.

Program background:  Team TADD (Teens against Drinking and Drugs) are committed to being alcohol-free, work in their community to promote the social norm of not drinking and provide alcohol free alternatives for their peers. Working together with advisors, the youth developed an innovative communication campaign using a channel popular with the target audience. The purpose was to develop, implement and evaluate a health communication campaign aimed to: 1) help youth reduce alcohol use and 2) provide youth a virtual support system with information and tools for staying alcohol free. The primary delivery channel for the campaign was SMS (short messaging service / texting). The SMS system had 4 keywords providing participants with various messages regarding alcohol use and resisting peer pressure: 1)  Choice: Empowering messages and alternatives to drinking 2)  Excuse: Reasons not to drink 3)  Fact: Facts on underage alcohol use 4)  TADD: For above three options and more information

Evaluation Methods and Results:  Surveys and focus groups were held prior to implementation to collect information about youth behavior, social competency, and awareness of policies around underage alcohol use. Post-test surveys were conducted after the 4-month intervention period that measured knowledge, attitudes, social norms, behavior, and campaign satisfaction. The campaign was promoted in the community and in the local high school using face-to-face advertising (tell a friend, announcements in classrooms and presentations at conferences), product placement (pencils, posters and t-shirts), the media (articles in local newspapers (paper and online), cable TV) and online promotion (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube). During the 4-month intervention, 865 text messages were disseminated. Of these, approximately 305 were out-going messages in direct response to a question by a participant, or were part of an out-bound message. Therefore, approximately 560 messages were in response to an in-bound keyword request. The project saw a steady increase in the number of ‘subscriptions’ per keyword. At the conclusion of the phase, there were 258 subscriptions for all four keywords combined, which translated to roughly 150 individuals. Excuse was the most frequently used keyword, with over 100 users. TADD was the second most common, with 85 users. While data are preliminary, the SMS-intervention shows promise for changing attitudes. Complete results will be presented and discussed.

Conclusions:  A texting campaign can be a promising component of an overall strategic plan to address youth public health initiatives.

Implications for research and/or practice: While repeat usage of such a system is possible, it must still be reinforced by advertising and engagement. The advertising component of such a campaign is just important as the actual campaign. Updating and creating new promotion and place strategies has helped to maintain the community’s awareness of and interest in the campaign.